Karin and Granny Haru
by robot-ninja-wizard accountant
Summary: A crack theory one-shot, where an anime filler character and current Quincy spoilers combine to create a story of what Karin has been up to since the Winter War. No shipping.


So going off what we have learned from resent chapters I am guessing that if Grandma Haru was a canon character she would be a half-blood Quincy or a fullbringer living in or near the border of Naruki City. Plus we know that Karin's spiritual abilities have grown over the break. Thus, this little idea was born.

There was a time when the only people Karin knew that could see spirits were the people in her family. Once Ichigo started hanging out with the Soul Reapers, there seemed like there were so many more, but they all seemed to be connected to Ichigo in some way. Grandma Haru was the first person completely separate from her family, who Karin had met that could see spirits. When Karin first asked Grandma Haru if she could stop by from time to time, Karin had been motivated by the want to keep an old woman happy, but as time when by Karin found herself wanting to talk to an outsider about her situation.

It wasn't until spring hit that Karin worked up the courage to ask Granny about seeing spirits, but once she had, Karin decided to make a special visit just for that reason. She brought a soccer ball if her resolve weakened, but Granny was so nice that Karin doubted she would need it. Bringing the ball had stopped her family from questioning where she was going. Karin didn't know why, but she felt guilty about asking someone outside the family about her spiritual powers.

Karin had thought that she was ready to hear whatever Grandma Haru had to say, but she was surprised by how knowledgeable Granny was after listening to her talk with Toshiro. But after the talk she had with Granny that made sense too.

When Karin asked if Granny had always been able to see spirits, Granny smiled.

"I had been waiting for you to ask that question. I know that Toshiro mentioned that I was like you, which is a strange thing because if Toshiro truly know what either you or I are he has buried that knowledge into his subconscious for our benefit and his."

This reply had already captured Karin attention. "Why would it be in Toshiro's benefit to not acknowledge what we are? Why would it be in our benefit? Do our spiritual abilities even come from the same place?"

Now there was a good deal that happened during that Winter that Karin still did not completely understand, but between the vague explanations that had been given Karin had learned that Ichigo had lost his powers and that her bubbling dad might have been a Soul Reaper, too. Was Granny trying to say that one of her parents had been a Soul Reaper, or …

Before Karin could finish that though Granny replied, "I remember your mother. There are many of us with some Quincy blood within Karkura and Naruki, but not many Echt Quincy. Your mother was the last of the Kurosaki line of Quincy and taken in by the Ishida family. I only saw her running around a few times and I doubt that she ever noticed me, but I remember."

"A Quincy?" Karin asked, "What does that even mean? My, my mother was a Quincy?"

"A Quincy," Granny Haru replied patiently, "is a human born with the genetic ability to see spirits and absorb spiritual energy to perform spell and to create weapons. The weapons that Quincy make destroy hollows rather than send them on to Soul Society, which I why I prefer to use my limited spiritual ability for spells and leave Hollows to the Soul Reapers like Toshiro."

"And it isn't a good thing for Toshiro to know that I am a Quincy"

"No"

This was only the beginning. From that day forward, when Karin would go visit Granny she would come to ask many more questions about the Quincy and the Soul Reapers.

Then the strange shop keeper came. The shop keeper was a Soul Reaper, like her father had been, like her brother had been, and the shop keeper somehow knew that Karin had found out that she was a Quincy, like her mother. He asked her what she wanted to do, and Karin told him what she had told everyone "If you just tell the spirits that could can't see them then they might as well not exist". Karin wasn't interested in being a Quincy, from what Granny told her the Soul Reapers would rather like the Quincy to stay out of things anyway.

But there was a part of her that watched as Ichigo seemed to wilt away without his powers, and a part of her that desperately wanted to connect to the mother who she mostly remembers as a poster on the wall. Ichigo and Yuzu might look like their mother, but she was the Quincy, except that sometimes Karin wonders that if not for Rukia, Ichigo might have been a Quincy, too. That didn't matter now though because Karin was the only one with real powers now, and they were growing as she grew, as she came to understand where they came from and how they worked. She could protect people with these power the shop keeper reminder her; she could protect her family. The shopkeeper has a plan of which Karin is unsure if she wants any part in. Instead, she takes the products that he gives and thinks of her own way to protect the brother that had always protected her.

Authors note:

I don't own anything. Absolute crack because Granny isn't canon, but a more fun explanation that 1) Isshin told Karin before Ichigo 2) Urahara told Karin but not Ichigo 3) Karin happened to find all her mom's Quincy stuff while cleaning and figured out how to use them by stalked Uryuu (ok this one is fun too, but seemed even more crack like to me then using a filler episode character). Please Review.


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